Data storage systems and methods are known to be desirable. Volume holographic recording systems generally use two counter-propagating laser or light beams converging within a photosensitive holographic medium to form an interference pattern. This interference pattern causes a change or modulation of the refractive index of the holographic medium. Where one of the light beams is modulated, responsively to data to be encoded, the resulting interference pattern encodes the modulating data in both intensity and phase. The recorded intensity and phase information may later be detected responsively to reintroduction of the un-modulated, or reference light beam, thereby recovering the encoded data as reflections.
Conventional “page-based” holographic memories have data written in the holographic medium in parallel, on 2-dimensional arrays or “pages”.
It is desirable to provide a relatively simple, inexpensive and robust holographic memory system. Further, bit-oriented holographic memory systems are desired.